


New Neighbors

by mylifeissocoollike



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/M, Modern AU, Neighbors AU, excuse my shitty title, i hope it's ok, i love the concept of the Potters being from India so i tried to show that background in here, it's only rated T for some swearing so idk it's whatever, jily, peter doesn't betray his friends, scheming remus, wish i had snuck some wolfstar in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 18:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6090727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylifeissocoollike/pseuds/mylifeissocoollike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>modern Jily au- James’s parents are coming over for the first time since the Marauders have moved into their new flat. As he’s about to cook an impressive meal for them, he realizes he’s missing a key ingredient and needs to borrow some from a particular red-headed neighbor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Neighbors

“So what has your knickers in a twist?” Sirius asked as he walked into the kitchen and saw a frantic James rummaging through their cupboards. All he got was a grunt as the boy moved to the next cabinet and continued his search.

“Remus!” James finally shouted, “Get your tall arse in here and check these top shelves for me!”

James couldn’t believe his fucking luck. It was the second Saturday after he and the boys had moved into their new flat together. He had cooked nearly every meal they had had in their two weeks living together and now, when he was cooking the most important meal yet, he couldn’t find any damn chili powder.

“What the hell is going on?” he heard Sirius ask as Remus entered the kitchen. “Is he trying to impress a girl or something?”

“Worse,” Remus said as he hip bumped James out of the way and started looking on the top shelf. “What am I looking for James?”

“Chili powder!” he said in a voice more dramatic than Sirius’s.

“Oi, we should have chili powder!” Peter shouted from the other room. “We bought some when we did our first grocery trip!”

“You know how often this idiot uses chili powder in his cooking though- it’s probably gone already.” Sirius smirked. James scowled and Sirius instantly stopped his teasing. He didn’t want to be banned from the dinner table- James’s cooking was amazing after all.

“Anyway, his parents are coming over for dinner,” Remus explained as he continued to check the top shelves for chili powder. _James is the only one who uses this shit_ , he thought, _so why the hell would he think it’s up so high?_

“Mum and Dad are coming over!? _Hell yeah_!” Sirius cheered.

“Sirius, _shut up_!” James threw his hands in the air and Peter, who had finally joined them in the kitchen, rolled his eyes. “This is horrible! If I don’t make them a delicious meal they’ll think we haven’t been eating properly! They’ll start lecturing us and saying that they knew we weren’t ready to live on our own!”

“Yeah, yeah I know.”

The boys continued to search the kitchen for at least ten more minutes. They searched high and low. Sirius even checked the loo to make sure none of them had been trying to pull a chili powder on the toilet seat prank and accidently left it in there. “The only one of us who ever tried that was _you_ Sirius,” Peter reminded him.

Eventually, they had to admit that their chili powder was gone. In only two weeks, James had used the entire jar.

“Why don’t you just not use it?” Remus suggested. James’s and Sirius’s eyes bugged out of their heads.

“I can’t make biryani _without chili powder_ , Remus! Mum would be appalled!” James exclaimed. Sirius, who had grown very accustomed to Mrs. Potter’s cooking while he lived with them for the past three years, vigorously nodded in agreement.

“We could go to the store and get some,” Peter suggested.

“That’ll take too long!” The other boys looked desperately around the kitchen as James gazed forlornly at his pre-chopped ingredients.

“Well there is one thing you could do,” Remus said. Something in his voice sounded like he was amused and James instantly bristled. He was sensitive about his cooking. If Remus made another drastic suggestion he would be eating Happy Meals for dinner for the next week.

“What exactly do you have in mind?” James asked.

“Lily.” There was a confused silence. James looked at Sirius and Peter but both of them shrugged. None of them had a clue what Remus was talking about.

“Are you suggesting I add _flowers_ to my biryani in lieu of chili powder?” James asked. Remus scoffed and looked at the other two, but was met with confused expressions.

“Have none of you twats introduced yourselves to our neighbors yet!?” he asked in shock. _Really the three of them are useless_. Sirius gasped and covered Peter’s ears.

“Language Moony!” he exclaimed. Remus simply shook his head and grabbed James’s arm.

“Lily Evans lives across the hall. She’s a lovely girl our age and I’m sure if you asked her if she had some chili powder, she would let you borrow some,” Remus explained as he dragged James toward the door. Before he knew it, James was being shoved into the hall. He stared at the door across from him and looked at Remus like a lost puppy. Remus shoved him further still and when James made no move, he leaned past him, knocked on the flat’s door and then quickly retreated behind their own.

Before James could follow him, the door across the hall opened and he was face to face with his new neighbor. _Technically,_ you’re _the new neighbor in this situation_ , his brain reminded him. Because making sarcastic comments was all it could do when it was faced with the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.

“Can I help you?” Lily asked. She smiled hesitantly and James noticed that the right corner of her mouth raised higher than the left when she did. He felt transfixed by her brilliant green eyes that reminded him of summers spent lying underneath the foliage of the banyan trees outside of his mother’s hometown. She cleared her throat and he realized that he had been staring for too long. _Idiot_.

“I’m James Potter, I live across the hall and was wondering if you would kindly lend me some chili powder. I promise that I will promptly return it. It’s just that I urgently need it so that my parents don’t think I haven’t been properly caring for myself since moving here and thus drag me back home. And that’d be an awful shame if they did because then I might never get to see you again,” he blurted out in nearly one breath. He felt his cheeks redden and honestly felt like such an arse. _Where had all his suave moves gone!?_ He was normally so good with the ladies. Nope, Lily Evans had knocked that out with one look. Luckily, she started to laugh in a way that made him feel that he might not have scared her off for good.

“Nice to meet you James. I do have some chili powder, if you wait right there I’ll get it for you.”

James barely had a moment to compose himself before she was back. He gratefully accepted it and promised that it would be returned that very night.

“I’ll even bring you some leftovers as a thank you,” he said as he began to back towards his own door. Lily’s nose crinkled and his heart sank with the thought that she didn’t want to have any further interaction with him- especially eating his food.

“You mean I’m not invited to dinner?” she joked as she slowly broke out into a smile.

“I mean, if you already want to meet the parents I suppose you could eat with us.” James nervously ran a hand through his hair. Lily was definitely a girl he wanted to introduce to his parents, he realized as the words left his mouth.

“Thank you James, but I’d like to get to know you a little more first,” she said. What was that sly smirk he saw on her face? The thought of what she could possibly by implying turned him on immensely and he focused on counting the cute freckles on her cheeks to stop thinking about other _things_.  

“How about dinner next weekend then?” he asked before he lost the nerve. He looked back into her eyes and saw them light up with amusement and was that a hint of excitement he saw there too? Yes it definitely was.

“It’s a date.”

They agreed to talk later in the week to iron out their dinner plans and James hurried back into the flat. As he rushed in he slammed the door into all three of his mates. They grinned sheepishly at him but only because they were embarrassed to be caught. After that they instantly started teasing him about how flustered he had been in front of Lily.

As they gathered in the kitchen and watched James cook their dinner, Remus, however, stayed rather quiet. He was smugly thinking of the jar of chili powder he had given Lily after a conversation the other day about how amazing the hall always smelled since they moved in and how she wanted to cook like them. That and the half used jar of theirs that he had dumped in the trash the night before.


End file.
